The Dune Group Doubles Fulfillment Rate

October 2012 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

By Bob Johns, associate editor

The fashion and footwear retailer implemented multiple management systems to improve fulfillment and inventory control chainwide.

When you operate stand-alone stores, franchises, and store-within-a-store models in areas such as the United Kingdom, Holland, Denmark, the Middle East, Russia, Czech Republic, and Poland, inventory control and planning can become huge issues. Such was the case for The Dune Group, a $260 million fashion and footwear retailer including Dune, Bertie, and Pied a Terre shops, that is expanding rapidly worldwide. The retailer needed visibility into the supply chain and the ability to get merchandise to the customer regardless of the channel being used.

This was the task to which Jamie Ovenden, group head of IT for The Dune Group, and his team were assigned. In mid- 2010 Ovenden began looking for a new planning system. As it turned out, the retailer decided to overhaul multiple systems including enterprise resource planning (ERP), warehouse management (WMS), merchandising, and direct/online fulfillment. Ovenden and his team worked with nearly every department to see what was needed from e-commerce and wholesale sales, finance, and operations. “The selection was made at the board level, but every department was involved in the research process,” Ovenden pointed out.